y lie down in rows for her to
trample on. So of course she tramples on them."

"Well, I never trampled on mice myself," observed Festus Willard. "It
sounds like uncertain footing. But I'll bet you five pounds of your
favorite candy against one of your very best kisses, that if she
undertakes to make a footpath of Hal Surtaine she'll get her feet hurt."

"Or her heart," said his wife. "And, oh, Festus dear, it's such a real,
warm, dear heart, under all the spoiled-childness of her."

CHAPTER XXV

STERN LOGIC

Between Dr. Surtaine and his son had risen a barrier built up of
reticences. At the outset of their reunion, they had chattered like a
pair of schoolboy friends, who, after long separation, must rehearse to
each other the whole roster of experiences. The Doctor was an enthusiast
of speech, glowingly loquacious above knife and fork, and the dinner
hours were enlivened for his son by his fund of far-gathered business
incidents and adventures, pointed with his crude but apt philosophy, and
irradiated with his centripetal optimism. He possessed and was conscious
of this prime virtue of talk, that he was never tiresome. Yet recently
he had noted a restlessness verging to actual distaste on Hal's part,
whenever he turned the conversation upon his favorite topic, the
greatness of Certina and the commercial romance of the proprietary
medicine business.

In his one close fellowship, the old quack cultivated even the minor and
finer virtues. With Hal he was scrupulously tactful. If the boy found
_his_ business an irksome subject, he would talk about the boy's
business. And he did, sounding the Paean of Policy across the Surtaine
mahogany in a hundred variations supported by a thousand instances. But
here, also, Hal grew restive. He responded no more willingly to leads on
journalism than to encomiums of Certina. Again the affectionate diplomat
changed his ground. He dropped into the lighter personalities; chatted
to Hal of his new friends, and was met halfway. But in secret he puzzled
and grieved over the waning of frankness and freedom in their
intercourse. Dinner, once eagerly looked forward to by both as the best
hour of the day, was now something of an ordeal, a contact in which
each must move warily, lest, all unknowing, he bruise the other.

Of the underlying truth of the situation Dr. Surtaine had no inkling.
Had any one told him that his son dared neither speak nor hear
unreservedly, lest the gathering